I know I didn't post anything about Christmas. It was a great Christmas, I miss my parents, had a good dinner and received some really nice gifts from really nice people. A post about Christmas doesn't inspire dialogue. I would rather think. A recent article in the Guardian Newspaper (UK) was an interview with Gary Taylor, frequent visitor to the White House, and his proposal to eliminate Homosexual Literature from public libraries and public performance. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1369643,00.html). I'll highlight Gary's call to bury Gay Books - a careful word choice, to be sure. One letter difference and he'd be burning them.
As I was discussing this with Tim Sniffen, we both sunk to the conclusion that there was no real action we wanted to take. Or could imagine taking. Feeling defeated, I realized that there are more people who don't like gays than there are gays. And, as 11/02/04 demonstrated, there are more conservatives than there are liberals - or at least more people willing to support a conservative institution than take a chance on a liberal democrat.
And so, I'm reminded of the newspapers that ignored the rise of Hitler's extremism. The National Socialist story was largely ignored in Germany; conscious individuals on the left were so overwhelmed with the absurdity of Hitler's call to action, that they didn't even know where to begin. Like Tim and I, they said, "But what do you say to those people?"
What do you say to the Christian Right? I've thought about using my future funding to buy billboards throughout the Bible Belt and simply advertise biblical absurdities; to use the good book against those who follow it. Imagine: white text on black, reading, "Stone disobedient children" Deuteronomy 21.
Or a longer one: "Suppose a man is caught raping a girl who is not engaged. He is to pay the girl's father the bride price of fifty pieces of silver, and she is to become his wife, because he forced her to have intercourse with him. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." Deuteronomy 22:28-29
Marry the rapist!? Wouldn't that wake someone up? I could do this for months - maybe follow it up with statements of morality from philosophers, or scientific truths. It would be worth any dollar amount if I could simply help one person realize that the Bible (and thus Christianity) is fallible. And it would make me feel empowered; that I was changing something. I'm sure that it would leak out that this Lesbian Comedienne from New York or Los Angeles was paying for the boards, but what does that matter when I'm simply printing the Bible?
It would be my, "Read the Book before you Follow the Faith" campaign. And it would get me assassinated. Sigh.
I think I got off topic. Oh Right! Merry Christ-mas.